New Scottish Cider launches in National Apple month

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The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and nothing is truer when it comes to Lost Orchards, a cider created at East Adamston Farm, near Dundee by a 4th generation family farmer Andrew Husband and his business partner Angus Morrison.

The Lost Orchards business was born from a collective vision to use the apples from the orchards on the farm, to create a premium Scottish cider and it also appealed to the joint founder’s vision of replanting orchards which have been disappearing throughout Scotland over the last century– to date they have already planted 5000 trees.

East Adamston Farm which the Husband’s have farmed since the 1940’s, already grows and supplies blackcurrants for Ribena and produces Katy apples from their apple orchard. The apples are picked during harvest and freshly pressed at the newly installed ‘Lost Orchards Cidery’ which was funded by an investment of £160,000 which included some assistance from the Food Processing Marketing Grant. This helped to transform an old barn into a state of the art fruit pressing centre in 2018.

Co-Founder, Angus Morrison said

‘Cider is continuing to enjoy a resurgence of popularity; currently the UK industry is worth £2.9 billion. We have created first and foremost a Scottish premium brand original apple cider which we have developed further to include two fruit varieties - Scottish Red Berries and Lime and Scottish Dark Berries. Currently, we are reaching out to the on-trade and enjoying the response from the industry and receiving great and positive feedback. In its first year the brand has already won a Gold Medal at The International Cider Awards at The Guildhall in London in the modern cider class.

We engaged early in the process to ensure we worked with the best in the business and enlisted the expertise of cider guru Bob Chaplin. He was at the forefront of helping us develop the product and shared with us, his 30 years of industry knowledge. We are ethically conscious and are constantly looking to improve on our sustainability and trace-ability. ’

Co-founder Andrew Husband

‘I have a passion for fruit growing and it was whilst watching my 80 year old father pressing apples for apple juice on an old wooden press, that the penny dropped. I planted the first orchard in 2012 and as a keen cider drinker, I felt there was a lack of quality premium ciders on the market and I wanted to develop our own. I also wanted Lost Orchards to reflect the taste and freshness of Scottish produce. I harvest our apples at their optimum ripeness and they are pressed in our onsite Cidery within 24 hours, to capture the full flavour and aroma. We have invested heavily in purchasing state of the art pressing equipment for the Cidery and are continuing to look at new product development.

We have formed a grower group who have already helped us plant thousands of trees over the past year and whose aim is to provide us with home grown apples for our cider for years to come. Our brand ethos; ‘For every sip we plant a pip’, means that every bottle sold will help us to re-plant the lost orchards of Scotland and return a long forgotten national industry to the heartlands of Scotland.'